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Monday, October 21, 2013

Celebrating Writing - Slice of Life

Five years
ago I was not a writer. Sure I wrote Facebook posts and emails, but that was
about the extent of it. I’m not sure when it was that I decided that I needed to be
a writer to teach writing, but it has been in the last five years and it is one of the best decisions I've made.

Best kind of PD - hosting in your PJs.

Monday my class and I celebrated the National Day on Writing. I shared with them the
Twitter chat I had hosted the night before. I told them how I was nervous
before it started – to host a chat AND host it with someone I greatly admire - the butterflies in my stomach were flying. I
shared with them the poem I wrote to get rid of some of those nerves. And then
I shared with them my blog post for Monday.

As I spoke I told them how sometimes – a lot of times – I sit down to write and
have NO IDEA what is going to come, I just trust that something will. That
sometimes what comes out is complete crap – and it needs to get out. But I left
them with this tweet from Penny Kittle:

I looked
out at those earnest fifth grade faces. I saw the heads nodding and knew some
of them were hearing me. I hope to reach them all before the end of the year.

As we were wrapping it up on the carpet Riley looked at me and said the words I
dread right now, “So, how’s your book going.”

Kids
stopped, they looked at me. I stammered and then said, “Not great. I’m stuck
and have stopped writing it.”

A quiet
voice to my right spoke up, “Well, what are you waiting for?”

Ugh. Right
to the heart. Maybe I’ll get an answer for that later. Right now I will continue
to put pen to paper and lose myself to the writing. Five years later, it is what I know.